13 Ups And 16 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2019

15. Lana Drama

Lana Shinsuke Nakamura
WWE.com

File this under “Things We Don’t Need in Wrestling.”

After finally overcoming confusing booking, Rusev won the United States Championship last month, continuing to ride a wave of support from fans. Sunday, that came grinding to a halt against former champ Shinsuke Nakamura.

Nakamura started undoing the turnbuckle pad, drawing Lana onto the apron the call him out. Shinsuke got in her face and told her to mind her own business. Rusev charged, Nak moved and Lana went splat on the floor. With Rusev distracted, Nakamura loaded up and hit a Kinshasa from behind to drop the Bulgarian Brute to recapture his US title.

It was just unnecessary, having Lana factor into the loss like this, even with how her ankle injury played out later. It dampened the US title match as a result.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.